‘Spud will do for now,’ I tell them.

I dream of walking along rows and rows of those plastic hospital cribs, looking for my son. When I finally get to the end crib, there’s no baby but a redcurrant-sized heart, pumping madly on its own.

What if he’s sick because of me and my faulty genes?

I try to focus on other things: my online nutrition course, my own fitness. One afternoon, I go to the big WHSmith at Churchill Square and buy every mother and baby magazine on the shelf.

I pore over their cheery advice about night feeds and colic remedies and milestones, even though the same magazines suggest I have no real role to play in my son’s life. The soft-focus photos show mothers and babies; men, if they ever appear, are blurs in the background. When they’re mentioned in the articles, it’s because they’re pestering for sex or jealous of the attention their baby is getting . . .

Apart from meeting my son, there’s one other thing I am desperate to do: tell Kerry that she stopped me making the worst mistake of my life. I’ve come so close to calling or turning up at her work. The only reason I haven’t is because I am scared something could still go wrong. So I promise myself that as soon as I know I’m going be allowed to be part of my son’s life, I will tell her I came to my senses.

I want so much more: a reunion, forgiveness, a future. I lie awake in the den, imagining me and my son and Kerry coming together to create a family, as though all the trials we’ve endured have been leading up to our deserved happy ending.

‘You’ve passed the checks so far,’ the lawyer says when she calls in late January, my parents with me, listening on speakerphone, ‘though you can expect some hard questions on your past drug use and future plans. Your ex is still trying, too, though given her erratic behaviour, I’d say she’s got a bigger fight on her hands.’

The lawyer expects me to be glad that Zoë is failing, because it might make it easier for me to succeed. But I’m not: I know how much she wants this, because I feel the same way. More than that, I want Spud to be loved.

At my next meeting with Edwina, she hands me a photograph, face down. I hesitate before I turn it over.

‘Don’t expect too much,’ she says. ‘His foster mum isn’t exactly Annie Leibowitz.’